I can say with great certainty that I didn’t know what love was
Dawn has just broken when she steps through the portal and onto the sands of the Port. Though the sun is barely rising, the heat is omnipresent, and the first thing she does is divest herself of her layers to place inside her bag. Though she hadn’t wanted to reveal her pregnant belly at all (unaware that news had reached them, and that her secret was little more than a daydream now) the heat had forced her into her most temperate linen dress, which shaped gently around her navel. Temperature was difficult these days, a side-effect Hotaru had yet to experience with any of her prior pregnancies. As such her hair is lifted and tied above her nape, allowing the meager airflow to caress the skin there.
She’s terrified.
Not of retribution or judgment. Jail or banishment. Hotaru has faced both in her years, and they have never held her long. But she’s so scared of seeing them again. It’s why she’d asked Deimos to accompany her the last time - scared of what she might do, should their paths cross unexpectedly. Would she weep? Beg for them to take her back? Scream and cry, rail against them, ask them why they didn’t fight? Why they moved on so easily, after claiming they loved her equally when she knew it was a lie?
She still loves them. She thinks she always will. And that love gives them access to vulnerable parts of her she can’t defend. That’s what truly scares her. The fact that they have the power to hurt her in ways she can’t hurt them in return.
Still, she is no coward. She stands there, frozen in idyllic, picturesque form against the watercolor skies and the early morning waves. Waiting to be found.
She’s terrified.
Not of retribution or judgment. Jail or banishment. Hotaru has faced both in her years, and they have never held her long. But she’s so scared of seeing them again. It’s why she’d asked Deimos to accompany her the last time - scared of what she might do, should their paths cross unexpectedly. Would she weep? Beg for them to take her back? Scream and cry, rail against them, ask them why they didn’t fight? Why they moved on so easily, after claiming they loved her equally when she knew it was a lie?
She still loves them. She thinks she always will. And that love gives them access to vulnerable parts of her she can’t defend. That’s what truly scares her. The fact that they have the power to hurt her in ways she can’t hurt them in return.
Still, she is no coward. She stands there, frozen in idyllic, picturesque form against the watercolor skies and the early morning waves. Waiting to be found.
until I knew what it was not
HOTARU
